Chris: There’s a lot of different techniques that you can use in Search Engine Optimization.Doorway pages is often talked about.It was an older technique that where you would go out and just make lots of doorway pages.Google tends not to like that.Although what we’ll do is integrate doorway pages into your natural website.And, really, the concept of the doorway pages still very relevant.It’s the way people get into your website.So we’ve got one client, PatrickWanis.com, he does a lot of blog entries and a lot of his blog entries are the doorway pages, if you will, for people to get to his website.

So if they’re talking about doorway pages, just make sure they’re talking about it in terms of fully integrated into your website, not just the old school doorway pages.And that speaks about what techniques are they going to use.We’ve talked about white hat versus black hat.And really that comes down to ethics.So you want to make sure that the Search Engine Optimization company you’re working with just gives you a right feeling with regard to the ethics that that company has.

Paul:I would even ask about what techniques like “Are you using White Hat or Black Hat techniques” because if you know, what they do with your website, what the SEO techniques that they use could potentially have negative effects on your website.So I would definitely ask about the techniques that you use.And make sure they’re doing—they’re using the right techniques and they’re using ethical techniques.

Chris:So that’s just one of those gut-feel things.And, you know, there’s a couple of questions that you can ask about, you know, like Paul said, what techniques do you use and why and would you ever use Black Hat techniques and why ‘cause there may be some—they may have some legitimate justification but they’ve got to come up with things that you think sit well with you ethically when they’re answering those questions.

One of the things you also want to look at is the kind of design techniques that they may use.There’s a technique called frame sites.And we don’t see these much anymore and if your design company is going to use a frame site, then, you want to ask them a couple of times why they’re going to use a frame site is, “Are there any other options?” because those are pretty ineffective for Search Engine Optimization.

Paul:And, you know, I think if you have a frame site and you want to do SEO and the company doesn’t say anything about it, I mean you—that might put up a red flag.If they don’t—if they just saved your site and try to optimize it, they don’t, you know, maybe offer an alternative to it, you might want to re-think about it.That to me would just give a big flag.

Chris:Another technique that you use often in websites is Javascript, that can be used for all sorts of things.Pull down menus.You can use it as an integration for Ajax which is—where you’re going to have integration with database information on a particular website without having to refresh the webpage.It’s a pretty nice technique—technology and technique.And it may not necessarily apply for your Search Engine Optimization.What you want to remember though is that sometimes Javascipt drop drowns, and I’m speaking in terms of navigation, so across the top of your website, you’ve got products.And when you put your cursor over the products, a dropdown shows up saying, “Okay, we’re selling—“we’ll be Joe the Plumber so we’re selling plumbing services, we’re selling rooting services, we’re selling whatever cleaning services.And that dropdown is often made with Javascript.

Now, Google typically cannot follow those Javascript links.So we’re not suggesting that you don’t use them, what we are saying is make sure that you have links at the bottom of the page.So you’ve got to know how to use Javascript and then how to get around the challenges that Javascript presents.

Paul:And make sure that your SEO company understands that and know the way around it.‘Cause that could be potentially, I mean if they don’t, that could be potentially harmful for your website.

Chris:So we’ve got in our list here now keyword and we’ve certainly gone over the importance of keywords, ad nauseam.

Paul:[laughs].

Chris:You know, content is king and keywords are the emperor, I don’t know what to say.

Paul:Yes.

Chris:Your content is king, it is the thing that ultimately drives people to your website and once they get there, engages them so that you can actually convert them into a customer.So keywords are what enable you to decide what content you need to be writing.And that’s the most important thing we feel we here at E-Webstyle bring to our clients is the ability to kind of identify the most valuable keywords.

Paul:You know, and I would say, for in terms of keywords, make sure that your SEO company understands your business well enough to be able to give you a solid list of keywords that is relevant for your business.If they’re not asking those questions, they don’t understand your business, you know, they can just throw a set of keywords at you and say, “All right, let’s roll with these,” without actually doing the research, knowing what’s happening on these keywords, what kind of hits they’re—what kind of action that these keywords are getting.And they really need to understand your business to be able to come up with that, those keywords.

Chris:Absolutely.The next thing we have on our list is link and one of the things we just want to just talk about that is you want to ask your SEO company are they using link farms ‘cause there’s lots of way to get inbound links, inbound links have a lot of value.That’s where one of the ways that Google decides page rank and so you just want to make sure that your SEO company is not using link farms.

Paul:What exactly is a link farm for the people that don’t know?

Chris:So link farm is just—if you look—if you ever pulled up a webpage and you’ve seen a whole slew of—what would those—of banner ads, right.One banner ad after the next after the next and potentially, page after page after page of banner ad after banner ad after banner ad.That would be a link farm and it could be attached to a decent website.But once your link is put in those banner farms or it doesn’t have to be banners, it could just be text, then, that’s not the way that you want to get inbound links.You want to get relevant inbound links to your website from, you know, websites with good PR.And typically link farms aren’t going to have great PR and Google’s—

Paul:[indiscernible] Yes, I really don’t like this.

Chris:And Google tends to find them annoying as well ‘cause Google’s aware that there’s all these outbound links and they’re going to—all these websites with different topics altogether, I mean, you know, unrelated and it’s going to start—it starts penalizing at some point saying, “Okay, you just got, you know, just say it, you got crap inbound links and we’re not going to give you credit for those.”

Paul:Yes.

Chris:So make sure that if link building should be part of any SEO package and just make sure that they’re doing it right.

Paul:Yes.

Chris:By asking them some questions about that.

Paul:And if you’re speaking to an SEO company and they don’t—if you don’t hear linking or building inbound links, wrong.You know, that’s—you should always—I mean that linking is a key SEO strategy.If they’re not talking about linking, then that’s definitely a red flag.

Chris:Again, a big part of the Google algorithm for determining for page rank has to do with inbound links.So if they’re not addressing, then they’re not—in a very real sense—they’re not addressing Google, which is the monster search engine on the block and you’ve got to be working with them within their parameters, like it or not.

The next thing on our list here is meta tags and we talk about or just meta information in general.So we’ve got meta tags which are keywords, descriptions and they’re not important as they used to be in most SEO literature that you’ll read these days.It does have some applicability.Some of it, we’ve actually specifically changed meta tags on a website.Let me give you an example.There’s a customer of ours who’s actually the one that got sabotaged, that’s still coming up.

Paul:Oh, okay, that’s right.

Chris:And they work on telephone systems and, you know, one of their keywords is ‘Telephone Repair Houston.’And one of the things that I noticed is, you know, if I’m looking for—if I type in ‘Telephone Repair Houston’, this was my thought process this that I’m actually looking for my phone system’s broken, I need it repaired, I need to find somebody and I may be in a fairly desperate situation.So what I recommended to them was to change the meta tags so that when their listing showed up in Google and right there on Position I, II or III, that their phone number was right there.So I could go and type ‘Houston’ and I haven’t double checked this so, guys, you’re welcome to send me emails saying I’m right or wrong or whoever that position is.

Paul:[laughs].Oh, they’ll let us know.[laughs].

Chris:[laughs].We love those emails.But you type in, you know, ‘Phone Repair Houston’ and then you want that phone number right there ‘cause then it’s—the customer doesn’t have to go any further.They’ve typed in the words they want; they believe Google’s going to give them relevant results, there’s the phone number right there in Position I, II or III.Boom!Pick up a phone and call.And so that’s an example where you can utilize meta tags to further the sale.

Another one is I like this example actually where we’ve been working with Patrick Wanis on quit smoking hypnosis and then particular cities like Quit Smoking Houston or Quit Smoking Hypnosis Miami and when you go into those cities, you can imagine the person who’s typing in ‘Quit Smoking Hypnosis Miami,’ for instance, ‘Houston’ actually, we got a call the other day.They’re actually looking for a hypnotherapist in that city.Well, Patrick is out of Miami and can do phone sessions so a lot of people – for whatever their reasons are – are comfortable doing hypnotherapy session over the phone, so we’re really engaging that customer and trying to convince him, “Hey, a hypnotherapy session is great but this CD from this high quality hypnotherapist which you can listen to over and over and over again, is actually a better solution.”So we’re trying to convert somebody who’s looking for a hypnotherapist to get them to buy a CD.Or what I’d realized is when somebody typed in ‘Quit Smoking Hypnosis Houston’, all the meta tags were such that it actually said the word ‘CD’ in it.So it was like ‘Quit Smoking Hypnosis CD.’Well, we know that they’re probably not looking for CDs so they’re probably not going to click through from that.So you go in and adjust your meta tags with the understanding of what is the client actually looking for, what did they type and you want to get them to that page.And then on that page, I actually removed CD out of the title and I moved any reference to CDs further down the page so that we could at least engage the customer first and then they could actually listen to some of our information.There’s an audio file of Patrick talking about quitting smoking with the hypnosis CD.And then, you know, at that point, they can make that decision.But if they’re not looking for a CD and it’s plastered everywhere, then, they’re actually not—they’re just either not going to click through or they’re going to bounce.

Paul:They’re going to bounce.[laughs].

Chris:[coughs].Alright, excuse me there.

Paul:Alright, what’s next?

Chris:Remnants of my flu which won’t ever happen again.

Paul:[laughs].

Chris:You want to make sure that you’re looking at work that the SEO company has done before, right.And you want to look at it for a couple of reasons.Again, you know, they may do a great job of getting you on the first position even for all of your key terms.And if they’re not working with you and consulting with you and saying, “Look, now that you’re just like that example that I gave you, what’s the logic between—behind the customer who comes to the website having typed ‘Quit Smoking Hypnosis Houston’ and are you catering to that person?So that’s—it’s again going back to understanding your business and then thinking like a customer and then making adjustments to your website so that you can increase and maximize your ROI.

Paul:Return-on-investment.Love that word.And, you know, that’s a great point that you brought up.If they’re—if a customer can—excuse me—an SEO company can get you onto the first page of Google, they get you on the first position that’s, you know, obviously that’s going to bring you some more click throughs, some more leads—

Author: eweb-admin

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